Category Archives: Egypt

So Israel and Palestine are at it. Again. I know this because Facebook told me. Perusing through various hashtags (#standwithIsrael, #prayforPalestine, and various other combinations of “slacktivism“) I came across an article regarding Ahmed al-Jabari, a senior commander of Hamas’ military wing. According to the article, Ahmed al-Jabari received a “draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel [and Hamas], when his car was blasted by the Israeli strike that killed him, Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin told Haaretz.”

Gershon Baskin – a co-chair of the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information and chief negotiator of the secret back channel negotiations for Gilad Shalit‘s release – wrote a NYTimes Op-Ed piece regarding the assassination:

I believe that Israel made a grave and irresponsible strategic error by deciding to kill Mr. Jabari…Passing messages between the two sides, I was able to learn firsthand that Mr. Jabari wasn’t just interested in a long-term cease-fire; he was also the person responsible for enforcing previous cease-fire understandings brokered by the Egyptian intelligence agency…On the morning that he was killed, Mr. Jabari received a draft proposal for an extended cease-fire with Israel, including mechanisms that would verify intentions and ensure compliance. This draft was agreed upon by me and Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, Mr. Hamad, when we met last week in Egypt…

In the draft, which I understand Mr. Jabari saw hours before he was killed, it was proposed that Israeli intelligence information transmitted through the Egyptians would be delivered to Mr. Jabari so that he could take action aimed at preventing an attack against Israel. Mr. Jabari and his forces would have had an opportunity to prove that they were serious when they told Egyptian intelligence officials that they were not interested in escalation. If Mr. Jabari had agreed to the draft, then we could have prevented this new round of violence; if he had refused, then Israel would have likely attacked in much the same way as it is now…

Instead, Mr. Jabari is dead — and with him died the possibility of a long-term cease-fire. Israel may have also compromised the ability of Egyptian intelligence officials to mediate a short-term cease-fire and placed Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt at risk.

This was not inevitable, and cooler heads could have prevailed. Mr. Jabari’s assassination removes one of the more practical actors on the Hamas side.

If that nugget does not blow your mind, here is something “better”: Ahmed al-Jabari – paranoid about his own security – rarely carried a cell phone with him or any other electronic device that was tracable and rarely made public appearances. So how was he found? According to George Joffé, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, Israel used a combination of technology and informers in order zero-in on al-Jabari’s location. He also opines that it must have been months in the planning, which seems to be the case, especially with the heavy aerial assault that followed, which destroyed strategically important targets. Therefore, if months of planning, following, and intelligence gathering were being consolidated, surely al-Jabari’s secret dealings were also exposed? If they were (which seems to be the case as non-military, non-secret parties were privy to the dealings), wouldn’t Israel have welcomed such negotiations and agreements to take root?

Sadly, the timing, planning, and precision of his assassination, which subsequently launched a full scale escalation by Israel, seems to hint at a different agenda. An agenda that doesn’t fall solely at the footsteps of Israel for it also falls at the footsteps of some strange bedfellows.

“Once upon a time, there were the Gaza Hamas and the Damascus Hamas. In the lead at the time was the Damascus Hamas, while the Gaza Hamas was subordinate to the former. The hierarchy was quite clear and the leaders had faces and names. The spiritual, religious Hamas leadership had its headquarters in Gaza. Sheik Ahmed Yassin set the tone then. Everyone knew his place, and each one knew what he had to do. However, Yassin was killed, the Damascus Hamas disintegrated and a leadership vacuum was created, but not for long. In walked Ahmed Jabari. Under his command, the Hamas military wing took over, pushing aside the political wing, something that could not have happened under Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

The chaos in Hamas and the lack of leadership capable of making tough decisions have led to a crisis in the organization. Under these circumstances, in the absence of control, anarchy reigns. It’s every man for himself and each does as he sees fit. Every armed militant is a hero. Every operative launching a Qassam rocket is a king. The Islamic Jihad raises its head and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) follow suit. These are relatively small organizations; however, the damage they cause is not in proportion to their size.”

Eldar goes on to articulate Hamas’ difficulty in keeping the smaller political groups such as Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in check and dealing with its own political vacuum and restructuring, which made it difficult for Hamas to impose to establish order in Gaza. This came to a head when the Secretary-General of the PRC was assassinated in March 2012, when Hamas’ muted reaction was seen as weakness to the PRC and Islamic Jihad’s “uncompromising ideal for armed struggle against Israel.” Eldar concludes that if Hamas do not re-radicalize, they risk being sidelined to the more radical groups or simply never being able to control Gaza, but:

“Under the current circumstances, disarming the militants and restoring law and order are far more difficult tasks than they were several years ago. And as matters now stand, there does not seem to be anyone in Hamas who can or wants to take such a brave step. There is no strong enough figure in Hamas these days endowed with genuine leadership skills and enjoying the unprecedentedly wide support required to make such a move. There is no one in Hamas today who is ready to pay the price of what is bound to be branded by the other organizations in Gaza as no less than infidelity and betrayal.”

Enter conflict analysis theory. In his book, The Functions of Social Conflict, Lewis Coser argues that in times of weak internal solidarity, despotism rises in order to meet the demand of war or external threat. By facing an external enemy, internal cohesion increases and through the reinforcement of ideals and norms and the purging of deviant ideals and members, control is established over the group. With these axioms in mind, I take Eldar’s conclusions a bit further and argue that certain political factions within Hamas desired to reestablish themselves as the very banner of Palestinian resistance (especially under an Islamic flag). In order to do so, they hung al-Jabari out to dry to purge any remnants of looking soft, gained a martyr in the process, and used al-Jabari’s death as a symbol that Israel has no intention of negotiating by killing Hamas’ chief negotiator between Israel and Gaza.

In other words, Hamas leaked that information intentionally to Israel, and Israel bit. But why would Israel comply in striking such a target and starting a major offensive? It’s argued that it’s an election year in Israel, and Netanyahu wants to show that he will not be idle as Hamas fires rockets into Israel’s south. He had been criticised for being a lame duck, but it seems for political points he has chosen to launch an offensive. However, it still doesn’t explain al-Jabari as a target even if Israel wanted to launch an offensive. His killing has no impact other than putting a halt to a peace treaty, and knowing that may put everything into perspective. Quite frankly, the evidence seems to support that factions at the top of Israel do not want to see this conflict to end for similar reasons as Hamas. They can maintain their stranglehold on power by scaring up votes when their national security is at risk. And so, Israel selectively targets those who are willing to broker a treaty (al-Jabari’s case) or cause harm and pain that will reinforce their enemy to continue to hate them, thus maintaining the cycle.

What started as the “Arab Spring” has transitioned and transformed – like seasons– to the “American Autumn”, and now perhaps something else entirely. Countless pundits, experts, and academics have opined on what it is, whether it is good or bad, successful or unsuccessful, or something unique or a continuation of the past. But every article, blog, TV plug, or radio interview seem unable to explain this global protest phenomenon with certainty and in its entirety. It may be because that participants in these movements are experimenting with new ways to organize, though they may not be aware of it themselves. But for these movements to be successful, they will need a little help from their friends (pun intended)—practitioners in the field of conflict.

What mainstream media did cover about these new social movements is the seemingly unorganized demonstration over a very palpable frustration. Such movements in the past, though having participants from a large number of “unaffiliated”, had activists that were part of formally structured and hierarchical organizations to provide a voice for the voiceless and organize their communities to become active, in which they would articulate demands through various communication mediums.

Social media and mobile telephony – unlike communication tools in the past like TV/Radio, cassette tapes, and, yes, the internet (we are that old) – in new social movements has for the most part freed the rigid categories of producer and consumer of media and information. The past required formally structured organizations and/or groups with clear roles and strategies to get the information out for consumption to the public, but today anybody can be a producer and consumer of information. This loosens (though does not dismiss) the need for formal organizations to provide a voice for the voiceless.

The leaderless Occupy movements that are taking place around the world is this theory manifested. Individual active participants in the movement become the producer, interpreter, filter, and consumer of information, and exchange ideas – in an antiquated Athenian democracy sort of way – to come up with the demands they want to protest for. However, articulating and deciding how a proper economic system should function is a lot harder than demanding the ouster of a leader like their Arab counterparts.

Demanding a leader to step down is not nuanced, nor is it subject to statistics, figures, or theory. It is clear and emotional enough to bring many groups together. In fact, demanding a leader to step down requires less (not none) organizational or community development to drive it in comparison to more abstract concepts such as economic policy or system design. However, even in cases were the demands were clear, like the case in Tunisia and Egypt, the less formally organized students – in comparison to their elite or Islamist counterparts –lost out to the quick turnaround in elections that followed.

What this means for the conflict community is that now, more than ever, community and organizational development through techniques and/or skills in facilitation, dialogue, and problem solving in conflict practice are needed. The advantage of formal organizations is that the leaders formulate and articulate demands, but in leaderless movements that is just moot. With proper training in dialogue and conflict management, participants of leaderless movements can remain “leaderless”, while making adequate progress in formulating and articulating demands.

I do not suggest that remaining leaderless is better than being formally organized or vice versa, but perhaps they reinforce each other in a truly positive direction. In other words, the unaffiliated – usually the common denizen – have been unable to contribute, and has caused societies to simply take down one leader for a formally organized other. Therefore, the leaderless need leaders, and leaders need the leaderless.

As Ben Ali and Mubarak eventually conceded to “their people” with reverberations being felt in other Arab countries, Iran swelled with courage and excitement to join in the democratic wave after its own momentum had abated since a year and a half ago. Pro-Democracy Iranians took to the streets to co-opt the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution to make their grievances heard. The diaspora flooded the various waves of technology to show support and make viral the pictures and videos that document the oppression and injustice the Iranian people are subjected to. However, while I do not like to be a “debbie downer”, the Iranian people do not face an oppressor like the one’s found in Tunisia, Egypt, or many other Arab countries in upheaval. They face something worse.

This might seem to be a “duh” thing to say, but what I want to point out is that the Iranian people are fighting a very, very different beast. Iranians face an oppressor on two fronts. One front includes the formal institutions of the Islamic Republic that include the President, the Majlis (Parliament), the Velayat-e-Faqih (Supreme Leader), Guardian Council, you know what, just see this picture here. The other front is the zealots, which include the Basij whom blend in with the general Iranian society and “tip off” authorities on opposition members and use indiscriminate violence to keep the Iranian people “in check”.

Unlike Iran, the governments of Ben Ali and Mubarak (and most of the other Arab countries) ruled their countries through a strong, organized, and vicious security apparatus. The strength of its power relied upon a swift cracking down upon dissidents and relied very little on having “popular support”. Sure it has the well-to-do, and they put up a fight as the pro-Mubarak forces did alongside the military, but they were egregiously outnumbered and have a lot more to lose should they get injured—most pro-Mubarak demonstrators/supporters hail from the upper classes of Egyptian society. Therefore, in every sense of the phrase, they did not have popular support.

Iran on the other hand has one too many experiences with “revolution”. In fact, you could say that the current Iranian regime wrote the handbook on modern revolutions. The key players that brought the Islamic government into power knew all too well that if they wanted to dethrone the more financially and militarily powerful Shah, they would need every man, even the most mendicant. Not to say that joining forces with the poor was a novel idea, as the French have immortalized, but Islam being built on the foundation of helping the poor, encouraging an austere lifestyle, and equality before God regardless of class produced a much greater symbiotic relationship that the poor could rally behind.

This relationship not only brought the Islamic government into power, but it has maintained their power through the Basij–a volunteer paramilitary organization used to intimidate, abuse, and rape dissidents, with their downtime hobbies including study of the Qur’an and various recreational activities like soccer, cards, and slapping each other in the face.

The Basij are primarily comprised of the poorer demographics of Iranian society, where many of them receive financial support and health services through membership (akin to how the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt operates). I want to clarify by saying that all those who are poor are NOT Basij, for many who are poor are on the side of the opposition. Instead, those who are members and receive benefits from the system find they have a lot to lose if the Islamic regime were to go. Their very identity lies with the organization, the Islamic Republic, which results in them laying their lives down for the Supreme Leader.

This is not to say that the Iranian people don’t stand a chance. They will emancipate themselves for the regime cannot sustain its current discourse not only politically and socially, but also economically. Yet, I believe that “emancipation” will come at the heavy price of going through years of protracted conflict. While the demonstrations after the 2009 presidential election were nonviolent and peaceful (on the opposition’s side of course), this time around the opposition is fighting back. As the government further cracks down on the opposition, it systematically radicalizes the opposition to take more extreme and potentially violent means in acquiring their rights. You add that to the resolve of the Iranian regime and the Basij who readily accept martyrdom, the conflict can escalate into something that would make Francisco Franco nostalgic.